Principles by Ray Dalio

Today I finished reading Principles by Ray Dalio. It’s an excellent book on life and work principles Dalio found helpful and encouraged readers to either adapt these or write their own. Ray Dalio is one of the successful investors in America. I’ve highlighted many sentences and paragraphs in this book. One of the sentences in the last few pages that I enjoyed is, “since your journey and evolution will certainly be a struggle, I hope that these principles will help you struggle and evolve well.” The Principles book is like a reference book that I can refer to when I’m struggling in my journey and evolution as I learn and grow.

Radically Open-mindedness

I’m reading Ray Dailo’s Principles again. I’m on Part II – Life Principles, Chapter 3 – Be Radically Open-Minded, where he introduces the concept of Radically Open-mindedness. Here are some snippets of what I enjoyed:

  • If you know that you are blind, you can figure out a way to see, whereas if you don’t know that you’re blind, you will continue to bump into your problems.
  • Radical open-mindedness is motivated by the genuine worry that you might not be seeing your choices optimally. It is the ability to effectively explore different points of view and different possibilities without letting your ego or your blind spots get in your way. It requires you to replace your attachment to always being right with the joy of learning what’s true.
  • Sincerely believe that you might not know the best possible path and recognize that your ability to deal well with “not knowing” is more important than what it is you do know.
  • Radically open-minded people know that coming up with the right questions and asking other smart people what they think is as important as having all the answers.